


The Habits of a Lifetime

by Valmouth



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Moving On, Running, coming home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-15 13:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valmouth/pseuds/Valmouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every time he runs away from home, he goes back a different person. And running away from home is something of a habit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Habits of a Lifetime

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own no rights to these characters, places, events, universe etc. I make no money from them and mean no offence by this.
> 
> A/N : I discovered far too many errors and plotholes in the eight chapters I put up and so I decided to pull them and work on it a bit more. I'll likely repost as a separate slash version and leave this one as a standalone. I'm really sorry about the inconsistency. If anyone is interested, I don't think the wait will be too long and thank you to everyone who has read and commented; you made this a whole lot of fun to write.

He spends his first night after the riots sleeplessly and on the run.

It’s nothing new.

At least this time he isn’t so sheltered. He knows what he needs to do and how he needs to do it. Hell, he has a ten-step plan to make it all work.

He makes his way to the cave, already counting down the seconds in the back of his mind. Alfred’s had the bag packed and ready for him for years, and once he’s changed, he pauses only long enough to touch the stone one last time.

The stone that is, after all, beneath the foundations of Wayne Manor.

Six generations, Alfred said, six generations of the Wayne family. Bruce touches the stone, and gives it up between one breath and the next.

He’s done. He’s given enough. Beyond losing Rachel, losing his parents, being the villain, he’s finally found his limits and now he’s willing to walk away. If he doesn’t walk away now, he realises, he never will. And it’s time.

So he walks.

Runs, actually. Back into the City.

He spends a month longer in Gotham, hiding in plain sight in the swarms of the dispossessed and the dazed. He simply slips into the crowd and vanishes.

His original plan is to lie low, maybe find a place to get some rest. He’s covered in bruises – and worse – and his knees are agony now that the adrenaline’s worn off. His back doesn’t feel that much better. He limps along for a while, but he never has been able to turn away from what needs to be done.

There are women and children in the line of ordinary citizens clearing the rubble. He joins them without a word, and becomes another link in the quietly determined chain.

His back hates him, and his left knee alternates between fire and ice, but he’s used to pain. He’s used to discipline. The pain is bad but he knows how to set his teeth and get on with it.

A kindly woman only a few years older than him finally catches him when he falls. She helps him to a chunk of stone too large to be lifted by humans and she leaves him there.

She doesn’t recognise him at all.

He luxuriates in the anonymity. The exhaustion and endorphins send him into a state of almost catatonic calm. He forces himself to get up and move on through it, only because he can’t afford to stay in one place too long. He can’t afford to draw attention.

He sees Gordon on a tiny functioning TV in a silent, nearly empty bar. The Commissioner looks as exhausted as he feels, and his answers are distracted, but his shoulders are back and his head is high. He looks like he’s in charge.

Bruce raises a paper cup of terrible coffee to his old ally, and when Gordon quietly begins to list the names of the police who fell in the month long struggle for Gotham’s freedom Bruce lowers his head in understanding reverence.

Gordon ends the conference with a repeal of the Batman’s arrest warrant.

The month passes in a slow, steady trickling of moments.

The papers announce the death of Bruce Wayne a week after the end of the riots. The last of the City’s most illustrious family but Wayne Enterprises has been failing for so long, Bruce Wayne was a recluse for so long, no one really seems to care.

Bruce Wayne was, also, the playboy billionaire who burned his own mansion to the ground. Who absconded with an entire ballet company. Who locked himself into his panic room when the Joker threatened his guests.

Bruce Wayne is buried quietly and without a fuss. Unlike Thomas and Martha Wayne, there is no public outcry. No outpouring of grief and tragedy. Bruce Wayne is just one out of a thousand names of those who have died and, unlike the names Gordon honoured before the whole City, his death, like his life, seems to have affected no one except himself.

And Alfred.

Bruce thinks about contacting Alfred. Alfred is the only part of his life that he regrets leaving behind.

But Alfred raised him to believe that one day he would leave, and Alfred would no longer be necessary.

Like a parent, Bruce thinks affectionately, and often as annoying as one.

After a month his bruises have faded. He can walk, he can work, he can stretch.

He catches a glimpse of Lucius walking into Wayne Tower, and wonders how the business will recover from the crash, _whether_ it will. But his concern is distant. He hopes it recovers for the sake of his employees.

As for himself, once the worst of the recovery is over, he has work to do. There are accounts and new identities salted all over the world for him, and at least two of the caches are right there in Gotham.

He recovers one of the two sets and waits for the opportune time to leave.

Gotham is nothing if not resilient, and the month he spends lurking in the sunlight convinces him that this is his time to leave. This is as good as it’s going to get.

It also convinces him that if he doesn’t leave now when he has this chance, he never will. Sooner or later someone will recognise him.

He boards a cheap economy flight to London exactly one month after his ‘death’.

It’s exciting to think of how the rest of his life is going to be. No more shadows, no more austerity. Time to take a moment, smell the roses. Find another purpose. Maybe find a... friend.

He lets himself smile at the thought.

He’s had no access to his ‘toys’ so he has no idea where Selina’s got to. She skipped town the same night he flew the Bat pod over the ocean. He wonders if she thinks he’s dead but the thought doesn’t depress him. Nothing about Selina depresses him.

In fact, he’s more amused by her than anything else. Amused and, okay, intrigued.

London is not Gotham, for which he is thankful, and the month’s growth of beard helps his disguise. No one looks twice at him, except to stare suspiciously and edge away.

There are things he has to do in London. He finds the third cache of accounts and identity cards, and uses them to create yet another set himself. One even Alfred wouldn’t track. Or possibly wouldn’t try too hard to track.

He does business with criminals who deal in identity fraud and it’s all too easy to fall into the old habits of working with them but never becoming one of them.

The headline catches his eye first: there’s been a jewel heist. By a daring cat burglar.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows he should be appalled. He should be disapproving. He should, by rights, want her to stop.

He just grins, and feels the grin get wider, until he’s laughing at the headline having not actually read the damn paper.

So much for her blank slate.

He doesn’t care. The Batman was created to catch violent criminals – murderers, mob bosses, drug dealers, pimps – he was never created to go after a common thief. Even if Selina’s thievery is anything but common.

She’s good. He gives her that much. But she’s not as good as he is at hiding in plain sight.

He follows her into a restaurant, and when she’s smiling at some other man, flirting in that sensuous, sinuous way she has, then he appears at her elbow, freshly shaved and suited and looking elegantly amused. He was born to this role, and knows it better than she does.

It’s almost too easy to extract her from another man’s table and lead her triumphantly back out into the night, in full view of everyone covertly watching the melodramatics under cover of more polite conversation.

The first expression he sees on her face is shock. The second is relief. The third is fear. The fourth... the fourth expression is hard to read. Her smile is fake. It doesn’t reach her eyes, which are cold and hard and dead.

He doesn’t own a car under his new name. Didn’t own a dress shirt or a razor until eight hours ago.

He takes her to his seedy apartment by taxi, and she raises an eyebrow to show her opinion of his current residence.

The sex that night is rough and eager and over almost too fast. It’s been years for him, barring Miranda, and if he wasn’t so frantic he’d be embarrassed by the confident way she gently corrects his headlong rush to reach the end. The way she slows him down, the way she shifts under him, firmly angling the fit of their hips to get him where she wants him, where she needs him. The way she guides his hands.

But when it’s over, when he’s panting into her shoulder and too lethargic to move, she gently, carefully runs her fingertips down the length of his spine.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, and her voice breaks halfway through, “If I’d known... I wouldn’t have, if I’d known.”

He wants to say it’s okay but it’s not. So he says the next best thing- “It’s in the past.”

It’s all the comfort he can offer. It’s all the comfort he’s used to.

She shuts her eyes and her face crumples, like she’s going to cry, and he kisses her, hard and harsh and possessively.

They fall asleep in a tangle of clinging limbs and sweat-slick skin, and they wake up on separate sides of his narrow bed.

He greets the morning at the window, watching the tiny patch of blue-grey London sky while she wakes up in slow increments in his periphery.

She sits up, lets the sheets slip down her breasts, and she’s thoroughly unashamed of her nakedness. Uses it, in fact, like a challenge and a weapon, all in one.

When he looks at her, he lets himself smile. Small, but genuine. And he says, “Ever been to Florence?”

“What are you trying to prove?” she sighs, “That you can forgive me? That we can be, what, friends?”

“I’m not used to friends,” he contemplates, “Bruce Wayne didn’t have many. How about we just see how it works out?”

And they do. For two years. For two years in which he makes love and financial investments and his knees stop hurting quite so much and his back gets stronger. Two years in which Selina never really stops being a thief; two years in which he never really stops training. Two years in which he falls in convenience and then lust and then love and then right back out again.

In those two years, sightings of the Batman drop dramatically, and Gotham gets a new superhero. The Red Robin isn’t Batman, but he’s all they’ve got.

There is a moment when Bruce tenses, when he hears there’s a new villain on the loose, but the Red Robin seems capable enough and all he has to know is that there is a capture at the end.

It’s no longer his job to go running when there’s trouble. At least, no longer his mission.

His time is his own, now. He spends it how and where he likes, with whom he likes, and the freedom in it never goes stale.

Florence does get a little boring, though. And Selina gets restless for new hunting grounds. So they travel a little – Rome, Barcelona, Paris, Geneva – a few months away and then their triumphant return to the poky little apartment he’s bought himself.

The rooms are peaceful with months’ worth of dust and sunlight striping in through the windows, and all the sound he can hear is Selina’s voice in the kitchen.

The windows are still closed, except for the shutter hanging slightly open. The chair is still slightly out of place, the corner of the rug flipped up.

“I checked the kitchen,” Selina says from the doorway.

She’s beautiful in floral print and no make-up.

“Anything?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she sighs, “Just like we left it. Nobody’s been in here.”      

The day he spots Alfred at the cafe is the day he realises he’s still running.

Alfred looks a little concerned, and a lot less stressed. He’s alone, which Bruce wonders about but knows will never be discussed. What Alfred does in the times when he is not butler, valet, guardian and friend is anybody’s guess.

Though Alfred has the remains of Bruce Wayne’s fortune, so Bruce amuses himself wondering how Alfred will spend it. Probably on nothing, he thinks, watching Alfred’s face light up at the sight of him.

They don’t speak. They don’t even meet. They nod and smile with three tables and the world between them, and Bruce feels warmth blossom under his ribs. It spreads like sunlight through his limbs and over his skin until he’s flushed with the happiness of it.

Because he is happy, sitting there with a woman he could love, with no shadows on his conscience, with a body that still works, with his oldest friend safe. And proud. He knows Alfred will be proud of the picture he makes.

It’s only when he gets back that he realises it’s why he took Selina with him. It’s why he wore the shirt he wore, why he didn’t have his head down.

He locks the doors and checks the windows every evening when dark falls.

“You’re paranoid,” Selina tells him.

He gives her a level stare. “You wouldn’t believe the things that come out at night.”

“Nobody’s coming after you, Bruce. Nobody even knows you’re alive.”

“Yet.”

She stiffens, eyes widening with guilt and hurt.

He doesn’t mean to accuse her. What he means is that there are three men in Gotham who suspect that Bruce Wayne may have survived Batman’s sacrifice, there’s Alfred who knows he survived, and any number of people who might recognise a man who was once one of the wealthiest people in the world. One of the most photographed, too, it seemed at the time.

He can’t kneel on the carpet and twisting sideways on the couch isn’t comfortable. All he can do is take her hand and pull her up to stand with him. Jerk his head to the bedroom.

It’s not the most graceful invitation he’s ever issued, but it’s been months and she expects nothing more than easy companionship.

Sex with Selina is... usually good. Satisfying. Happy. They know what they like, now, and there’s no need to experiment.

But sex that night is restless and rough, like it was the very first night. He finds himself pulling away to look at her like she’s turned into a stranger right in front of him. He knows her features, her expressions, the way she bites her lower lip when he sinks in, the way she moans when he slides his hand between her back and the bed and pulls her up towards him.

But there’s a strange sense of disconnect suddenly.

He goes running the next morning.

It’s never been his preferred means of exercise, but it keeps him fit, stretches his muscles and doesn’t require him to keep a katana hidden in his apartment.

He gets back to find Selina watching Italian soap operas in the living room, painting her toenails, and the sense of disconnect increases.

They’ve turned into a couple. She’s wearing shorts and a ratty old tshirt and he’s dripping with sweat and kicking off his trainers, and they don’t need to say a word. A quick ‘hey’ and she’s focused on the screen again, fingers deftly juggling the little bottle and brush.

It’s nice, he thinks. It’s what he wanted from Rachel. From Miranda, when there’d been a small seed of hope that he’d finally found someone who could stand him as Bruce and as Batman. Selina has seen him as the worst he is, and the best that he can be, and she’s sitting on his couch like she trusts him.

It hits him with a start that he doesn’t trust her.

When her back’s against the wall, he’s not entirely sure that she won’t sell him out to save herself.

He wants to say that he understands and he doesn’t blame her, but he can’t. Or won’t. He wouldn’t do it to her.

Two years turn into three, and they go back to London out of curiosity.

There’s a strange new rumour filtering through the news about a serial murderer in London.

Bruce isn’t Batman, and Selina is not a vigilante, but they go back and it’s easy enough to find what the police don’t. Because they’re not bound by the rules the way the police are. Evidence is easier to collect with two working side by side. Selina’s better with a camera than he is, and far more adept at twisting words to trap an unhelpful witness.

It’s a healthy challenge, too, with CCTV.

“Leave it to me,” Selina sighs.

And Bruce forces himself to do that.

Footage for that night across an entire grid on the network gets wiped. He doesn’t ask and she doesn’t tell. They deliver the evidence and the perpetrator to the police, with a note.

“Want to sign it with the bat sign?” she asks acerbically, watching him print the letters.

He doesn’t deign to answer.

He hopes that this is the start of a new challenge for her. For them. His body worked well through the case and Selina was interested enough.

He watches her eye a jewellery store the next day.

“You don’t have to use your skills like that,” he says.

Her lips thin. “I wondered how long it would take you to start preaching at me.”

“I’m not preaching. It’s just a suggestion. We did good work on those murders.”

“I thought Batman always worked alone.”

“He was a lot younger, and he had some help.”

“Who, the police? The journalists? All the people who never thanked him?”

He grinds his teeth. “I never needed thanks,” he growls.

She sighs impatiently and shakes her head. But she lets the topic drop.

So does he; it’s clear she isn’t planning to change.

The Red Robin makes the news for getting severely injured. He’s in the hospital, the news reports say, under close guard handpicked by the Commissioner. There’s a short statement from Gordon, confirming that the Red Robin was injured while assisting the police in closing down a drugs lab. The building exploded while Red Robin was still inside.

“Commissioner Gordon, do you now know the identity of the man they call Red Robin?”

“No,” Gordon says shortly, “In the circumstances, we’re protecting his privacy from everyone, including ourselves.”

Bruce raises an eyebrow. It’s an unusually big breach of protocol. A vigilante is still a vigilante; the police are required to show their willingness to squash any signs of unlawful behaviour.

“It’s ironic that it’s another example of superhero death by explosion,” Selina points out.

It’s another example of Gordon’s loyalty, Bruce thinks silently. He remembers lying on hard asphalt, every bone aching from the impact of the crash, eyes barely slitting open while the Joker fumbled with the catches of his cowl. And then he remembers the relief of having someone shove the man away from him.

Gordon never wanted to know, until the end.

Bruce wonders what Gordon thinks of the Batman now.

Jim’s possibly seeing someone. There’s an article on the internet about a charity function given by the Wayne Foundation, and there’s a photo of the Commissioner looking uncomfortable and nondescript in a tuxedo. There’s a woman at his side; Bruce doesn’t recognise her. The caption reads ‘Sarah Essen”.

 She’s not a raving beauty but she’s pretty. Neat, even features and long blond hair. She looks calm, in stark contrast to Jim’s perpetually harried expression.

Bruce smirks, and wonders how his old friend feels about dating again.

It would be something to ask, just to see what Gordon would say. He wonders what sort of answer he’d get, and invariably realises it would depend, for Gordon, on exactly who was asking. The Batman would get a worried stare for asking something so personal, and Bruce Wayne would get a suspicious stare for daring to ask at all. Of the two, Batman would get an honest answer.

Then again, Gordon now knows the two are the same. Bruce has the itch to confront Gordon as he is now, as neither a Wayne nor a man dressed as a giant bat, as a man not pretending to be two people so diametrically different from each other.

He wonders if Gordon will trust a man whose face he can see. A mere mortal. Not a superhero.

Selina goes out thieving.

He doesn’t say anything when she leaves, and says even less when she comes back. Even when she strips down in front of him, using her nakedness as a challenge, as a weapon.

It’s a weapon he appreciates, at least, far more than a gun, and is hopefully less likely to kill him.

She curls between his legs and sucks him to aching hardness, and then continues, even when he tries to warn her that he’s close, so close, can’t wait, can’t hold on. She swallows nonchalantly and then uncurls.

“That should help you de-stress,” she says languidly, ice in her voice, and then she shuts the bathroom door between them and doesn’t come out for an hour.

Three years are edging inexorably closer to four and he lies in a battered old bed, on a mattress that feels like cardboard most nights, and stares at the cracks in the ceiling. His boxers are still around his knees, where she’s left them, and he can feel her saliva dry against his skin.

Oddly enough, it’s the first time she’s given him a blowjob.

They’re comfortable with each other. They don’t need to experiment. But she chose tonight to give him a blowjob.

He wonders what went wrong.

She tells him the next morning, when she’s packed and ready to leave.

He finds her sitting on the couch when he gets back from his run.

Her eyes are clear, and her face is pale. One suitcase, a carryall and her handbag are waiting by the door.

“Why?” he asks.

“It’s not working out,” she says, “I’m a thief. It’s what I do.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes.”

“Then it doesn’t have to be,” he says. He drops to his knees in front of her and he reaches out to take her hands.

He’s sweaty and hot and she’s dressed for a business class ticket at Heathrow Airport, but it fits. He’s seen her in all the ways that count, and none of it matters now, when he has to persuade her that she doesn’t need to leave.

“See?” she says, “That’s what you really think about it. About me.”

"Can you blame me, Selina? Nobody wants his girlfriend to be a cat burglar. Casing joints on a Friday night, running over rooftops, bypassing security systems – I’m being honest here, I wish you didn’t do it. But if you do, if you have to, we can work something out. Maybe we can use it to help people. Robin Hood, right? We’re in England; we can do that. We can think of something.”

Her face crumples, like he’s said the one thing he shouldn’t have.

“Nobody wants a guy who dresses up like a giant bat either,” she says.

“I don’t do that anymore.”

“Yes,” she says, “You do. Right now in your head, but soon it’s not going to be enough. We both know that.”

“You know why I can’t,” he says desperately, “My body won’t let me.”

“Your body,” she says, and it sounds like she’s an inch away from screaming hysterically or bursting into tears, “Is fine.”

“My knees...”

“You’re kneeling right now, Bruce. Any pain?”

He freezes.

“I have no damn cartilage in that knee and you’re saying I imagine the pain?”

“I’m saying you’ll fight no matter the odds. Even your back is fine. You have to be careful, maybe, but you don’t need me to tell you that. You’ll work something out,” she adds, smiling at him.

It’s quick and forced and gone before it’s arrived.

“Hey,” she says, when the silence starts to tick by, and she ducks her head to make sure she’s looking him in the eye, “It was a good try.”

“You don’t have to leave,” he says implacably.

Because really, with all the argument he could make, it’s the only point that matters.

“I never planned to stay,” she tells him.

So Selina Kyle stands up and walks to the door.

He stumbles to his feet, wincing as the pain spikes a little in his knee. By the time he’s straightened himself up, she’s already slung her handbag over her shoulder, already picked up her carryall.

He folds his arms when she pulls up the handle of her suitcase, and looks at the floor when she gives him one more quick, fleeting smile. When he looks at her again, she’s turning away, jaw tense and muscles in her bared arms flexing as she hauls herself out of his life.

“It’s not like it’s goodbye,” she says quietly, pausing for one last second, “I could visit sometime.”

“I’ll keep an eye on the headlines,” he says.

She flinches and leaves.

In the end, she’s right. And wrong. He is who he is and what he is. His anger has driven him for so long but somewhere in the eight years when he retreated from the world, he lost the ability to sustain it. He grew tired. He lost the will to act.

He thinks Ra’s would have found it amusing.

He washes more than the sweat off himself that morning. He washes the despondence away, the tired, injured defeat. He washes away Rachel and his parents and Selina, and even, to some extent, Ra’s and Miranda, both of whom he trusted with himself and who betrayed him.

He washes away Harvey Dent, who was not, ten years later, the best of them as Bruce had thought. A good man but easily corrupted. Unsuited to the dark that could descend on Gotham.

Harvey, who Bruce gambled almost everything on, and who turned out to be as big a disappointment as anyone else.

He packs up that very day, before he can question his own resolve, and he moves to another apartment. A seedy place in a rundown suburb.

And for a week, he undertakes a training that has nothing to do with keeping his body fit, but has everything to do with preparing his mind.

Bane beat him with superior strength, and with training. Bane beat him because the Batman was just a man in a costume. Bruce does not intend to let that happen again.

The drug dealers and pimps are, granted, small fry for a superhero, but then he doesn’t dress like a superhero. He disposes of his prey swiftly and efficiently, and relearns his acquaintance with the shadows.

In Gotham, the Red Robin emerges as a hero for rescuing the daughter of a Councillor from ruthless kidnappers.

There is no photo of the Red Robin, but there is a photo of the little girl with her parents. The parents smile, the Councillor gives a statement of heartfelt thanks, and the little girl looks haunted. She huddles close to her mother, clearly trying to hide.

The Commissioner is watching the little girl, his face hard.

Bruce takes this as his cue.

He’s not back in the game yet but he’s getting there.

Gotham is dark when he arrives on the train from New York. It’s dismal and dinghy and smells of autumn. He stands on the steps of the station and lets himself breathe in for a while.

There is no epiphany in Gotham. He’s had that already. All Gotham gives him is a chill, and the shiver of anticipation that slides down the back of his neck as he follows the roads and signs he still knows so well.

It’s the first time in a long time that he’s confronted a Gotham night without a mask. Either Bruce Wayne’s or Batman’s.

Rachel was right, he thinks. The boy who sold his coat and ran away for seven years never had come back.

The Palace Hotel is the only place he considers for this. He’s done this once before, and the old way is still the best.

He strolls in with a duffel bag, a smile for the receptionist, and his chin up. He’s clean-shaven and reasonably presentable, and he catches the flicker of uncertainty on the man’s face before he comes to a stop in front of the counter and says he needs to book a room.

“No,” he says, thinking about it, “A suite. I think a suite will be better. What do you have available?”

The man looks flustered.

There are three suites available but Bruce doesn’t offer any ID, any credit cards, any reservations, just stands there smiling ironically while the man fluctuates between suspicion and better judgement.

“What name would you like to reserve the room under?” the receptionist asks.

“Wayne,” Bruce says calmly.

The man’s fingers fumble across the keys, the clacking almost loud.

“F-first name?”

“Bruce,” Bruce says.

The reception is young and clearly terrified of getting this wrong. “If you would wait a moment, Mr – er – sir, I’ll just go... won’t be a moment.”

Bruce has all night. He hasn’t planned anything else for his triumphant return.

The foyer has been redecorated since Bane’s revolution. Clearly there was damage sustained. There are more plants these days, and slightly less furniture.

The receptionist comes back with an older man who clearly has more authority.

Bruce lets his grin widen. “Mr. Daniels,” he says jovially, and extends his hand, “Good to see you again.”

“Mr. Wayne,” Daniels exclaims, shocked and awed and warm with welcome, “Mr. Wayne, it really is you. Oh, it’s so good to see you again. We thought you were dead!”

“I’m sure that’s just a rumour,” he replies.

“But they announced it in the papers and everything, Mr. Wayne! Newspapers, I suppose, you never can believe a word they say. Grant, the penthouse for Mr. Wayne. How long would you like to reserve it for, Mr. Wayne?”

“I’ve got no idea at this point,” Bruce says easily.

“Of course, of course, Mr. Wayne. Your bag?”

The penthouse is just as he remembers it. He supposes the richest accommodation the Palace could offer wouldn’t have escaped unscathed from the riots but it’s been patched up and redone to look exactly as it did in its former glory.

Daniels leaves him alone after a few more moments of polite conversation. He closes the door on his way out and Bruce stares out of the window at the Gotham skyline.

The night sky is pure black, with no stars, and the lights of the city blaze beneath it. Between the two, Wayne Tower still stands; the heart and hub of the City.

He gets caught up in it for long minutes at a time, walking slowly out onto the balcony to breathe in once more.

There is no epiphany here either. But there is a quiet moment when something smoothes over in his soul. A crack he hadn’t known was there.

He’s going to die here, he thinks, and live nowhere else.

His first phone call is to Alfred.

“Hi Alfred,” he says.

There’s a stunned silence and then – “I hope you’re not calling me from jail.”

“Would the penthouse in the Palace be better?”

“Well, if I’m to get a choice in the matter...”

“I’m back, Alfred.”

There’s another silence, and this time a sigh. “For good, I take it.”

“For good.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Well, you’re going to be the only one. There’s going to be a storm over this.”

“We’ll weather it, Master Bruce. As we always do.”

The warmth tingles beneath his ribs, spreading over his skin and through his limbs and Bruce closes his eyes to luxuriate in the feeling. So rare, and perhaps it will be the last time.

“I’m sure Mr. Fox will need to be told, sir. I’d call him next if I were you. Bruce Wayne’s second return from the dead is a matter of concern for Wayne Enterprises.”

“I was thinking about another friend of ours too.”

“That, I would suggest, can keep until morning. I will see you in one hour, sir.”

“That’s not necessary.”

There is a third silence, and then, “Would I be interrupting, sir? The young lady from Florence, perhaps...”

Bruce winces. “No. She decided not to join me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“So was I.”

“Therefore I will be there in one hour.”

Alfred is as good as his word. In fifty minutes, he’s striding into the lobby. In five minutes he’s at the door of Bruce’s suite. Within the hour, he’s standing in front of Bruce.

They don’t hug. It’s never been Alfred’s way once Bruce was over the worst grief for his parents. But there is a charged moment of understanding before Alfred says, “It’s good to see you again, Master Bruce.”

“It’s good to be back.”

“When you say you’re back for good, I assume you’re also referring to certain nocturnal activities?”

“That’s the plan. That’s why I need to speak to John.”

“The Red Robin is not Batman, Master Wayne.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, sir, that I believe Gotham will be relieved to have the Batman back.”

Bruce frowns. “I thought they liked the Red Robin. He seemed to be doing okay.”

“Oh, he is. Much better than anticipated. But bear in mind he has had no training. Not like his predecessor. And Gotham is a big city.”

“By which I take it you’re in favour of us going out there as a team.”

“Two heads are better than one.”

“Not,” Bruce says firmly, “In the tumbler. We don’t have the space.”

“Master John rides the motorbike, sir. I think you’ll find it far more convenient. Mr. Fox has been quite helpful designing new technology for a new persona.”

“And the bat things?”

“Ready and available in the cave.” Alfred smiles. “I had a feeling we might need them again.”

Things with Alfred fall into a pattern so easily Bruce is sceptical at first. He catches himself watching Alfred, wondering if it isn’t too easy. But Alfred seems genuine. And genuinely happy.

“And in the interim,” Alfred finishes, “A credit card.”

He places the wallet with cash and card down on the table.

“Thanks, Alfred,” Bruce says.

The word isn’t enough for all that he owes his old friend but Alfred’s smug smile and soft eyes tell him it’s been noted and understood.

He sees the morning in on the balcony, leaning his elbows on the railing and staring down into the city. Gotham is not beautiful, nor is it as kind as it once was, but it has a personality all its own. And Bruce watches it come alive as a new day dawns.

The news breaks early that day, and by the time he’s unfurling the newspaper and enjoying the fact that a full coffee cup magically appears to hand courtesy of Alfred, the first of the reporters have already tried their luck in sneaking through hotel security.

Lucius Fox calls.

“Coming back from the death is becoming a habit, Mr. Wayne,” he says, “I’m not sure it’s a good one.”

“Assassination attempts, Mr. Fox,” Bruce says easily, “I was lying low until the worst of it was over.”

“I see. I’ll have the PR department write an official statement around that one. Since you’ve been alive in the last three and a half years, I’m assuming you know that we recovered enough of the Wayne fortune to keep the company afloat.”

“I did. That was good work, Lucius. I wish I’d been there to help,” Bruce adds, voice softening to honesty.

“We’re just glad you’re back now. It’s certainly better than the alternative.”

The first call doesn’t discuss anything important. By mutual agreement they’ve never spoken openly on an unsecured phone line. Not about the technology Bruce requires, and not about the financial dealings of Wayne Enterprises. The former is personal and the latter is professional, but both are sensitive topics and Lucius Fox knows all too well how technology can be hijacked.

The third call of the morning is from the police.

Bruce is surprised to receive a call from reception, informing him that a Sergeant Soto is there to see him.

“Send him up,” Bruce says.

Alfred opens the door to Soto to find the man is big and awkward and doesn’t want to be there.

This part of the act, Bruce remembers as well as anything else. He waves at Alfred to let the man in and then throws himself into a chair, relaxed and arrogantly unselfconscious. He’s in the only other pair of jeans he owns and a shirt he bought in a fleamarket, but the Sergeant shifts nervously and darts an eye at Alfred as if he’s intimidated beyond belief.

Bruce wonders what the man would do if he was dressed as Batman.

In the end, it turns out the Sergeant’s nervous because he’s been charged with the task of formally lecturing Bruce Wayne on the inadvisability of identity fraud.

For one wild moment, Bruce is almost ready to treat the unfortunate Sergeant in the way Soto believes he will.

The next second he calms down. He settles for contrite apology and careless charm, and Soto relaxes enough to stop fidgeting.

“I suppose I should have expected that,” Bruce says, when Soto is safely back on the elevator going down. He folds his arms and frowns at the doorway. “I wonder why Jim didn’t come himself.”

“Commissioner Gordon is a very busy man.”

“Too busy for Batman?”

“But you’re not Batman yet, Master Bruce. You’re only Bruce Wayne.”

“Thanks for the reminder.”

He drops the subject but it still upsets him a little. Of all the people he would have expected to see on his first morning back, as well publicised as it is, Jim was heading the list until a few minutes ago.

The Mayor calls him less than an hour later, just as Bruce is switching on the TV to find that all the stations are announcing his return as breaking news.

The new Mayor doesn’t have Garcia’s heavy handed ambition, nor does she have Garcia’s sheer audacity. She does not smile through thinly veiled attempts to curry favour. In fact, she doesn’t make thinly veiled attempts to curry favour.

She calls him, she says, as a professional courtesy given that his family have been pillars of the community for so many generations. She says she’s glad he’s back. She has a dry sense of humour, clearly, because she says she hopes he can withstand the prolonged siege the press is no doubt going to make on his hotel.

“Oh, I’m sure Gotham PD can handle it if it gets out of hand,” Bruce replies.

“I’m sure they can, Mr. Wayne.”

There is a spark of amusement in the words but he doesn’t get the time to examine it because she ends the conversation.

It’s not until early evening that John comes to find him.

John punches him.

“You died,” he accuses.

“Temporarily,” Bruce says, and then raises his eyebrows, “Seriously, is that all you’ve got?”

He gets another punch for his pains. And blocks a third, and sends John crashing to the floor.

He shifts the furniture aside to create a semblance of space big enough for a few quick sparring manoeuvres. From what Alfred’s told him, he expects John to be fairly simple to beat. 

What John is, is sure-footed and balanced, quick and flexible. He doesn’t hammer at things, he dances around them. Which should not be as effective as it is. In an hour’s time, they’re both sweating, focused, and he’s panting far worse than John is.

He’s older.

“I think you’ve put on a bit of weight, sir,” Alfred notes.

John snorts into the sleeve he’s using to wipe his face while Bruce rolls his eyes.

John stays for the rest of the evening, and they talk.

Bruce watches the play of emotions that range over John’s face and he thinks of when he was learning his craft, thinks of Ra’s and the combination of ruthless attack and gentle comfort. In the end, it’s made him who he is. But he can’t bring himself to play that role for John.

Who, moreover, has not come to him for help.

John is sceptical about his offer of a partnership, but doesn’t shoot him down straight away.

“You sure you’re up to it?” John asks.

Bruce stares at him for a full five seconds, wondering if the man’s being funny but John isn’t. He’s completely serious.

Bruce does him a favour and gives him the benefit of the doubt. He does him a bigger favour and answers him truthfully – “We’ll find out soon enough.”

 


End file.
